English Rose
by breeeliss
Summary: "You know very early on where you belong and who you're meant to be with, 'D. That's not something that can ever change. Those people and places will always come back." 2nu.


**Title:** English Rose

 **Rating:** K+

 **Summary:** You know very early on where you belong and who you're meant to be with, 'D. That's not something that can ever change. Those people and places will always come back. 2nu.

 **a/n:** I've been feeling very gooey and sentimental lately so I wrote something gooey and sentimental. See how that works? :P

 **OOO**

 _English Rose_

 **OOO**

2D noticed it first when Noodle asked if she could cut his hair.

She admittedly scared him when she cleared her throat suddenly from the doorway. Noodle moved so quietly now — no more heavy steps and humming through the halls — and it made her seem so otherworldly. Like something insubstantial rubbed off on her when she escaped Hell. Like she became a mystery all over again, something that he knew nothing about anymore, with secrets written in scars and bruises over her skin that had no explanations.

But Noodle stood there in an old pair of worn, knit, thigh-high socks that she used to love — fingers curling into the threads of the unravelling hem, toes just brushing against the floor out of nervousness — and she seemed so familiar then, so precious, so safe, and so warm. He couldn't say no to her.

He let his fingertips brush against the ends of his hair hanging by his ear lobe while Noodle laid a towel across his shoulders. "'S not that bad, is it?"

2D felt two small drips of water against his ear before Noodle's wet hands started combing through his hair and dampening his locks. "Just longer is all," she said softly. "You never let it grow this long."

She was pulling a comb through his hair, and he wanted to tell her that there wasn't much he could do in the way of trims stuck on a garbage pile and locked in a room in paralyzing fear half the time. It was all he could do not to break a fist through the wall or double up on pills just so he could sleep through the worst of it. But Noodle didn't need awful stories from him. She had enough of her own. He shrugged his shoulders gently so as not to disrupt her. "Didn't feel like bothering. Didn't know you were offering neither."

Noodle did this strange thing where she rubbed the dripping ends of his hair between her fingers for a moment before she slid them between her fingertips and snipped away to get a clean cut. 2D noticed, but didn't mind it, so he didn't ask for a reason why. "I was...bored, I guess," Noodle hesitated. "Russel doesn't want to talk to anybody and Murdoc is downstairs. I didn't want to be alone."

2D hadn't even noticed. 2D was used to being alone. A quiet house, an abandoned apartment, a prison cell, no music but the ringing in his ears. That had become normal.

He remembered Noodle always singing in the halls, bashing her robot monkey against the walls, stomping down the stairs in rhythm to a song, and dancing through the kitchen when there were chocolate chip pancakes on the table.

Noodle's fingers brushed against his ears, and even her breathing was quiet now. He supposed he'd get to a point where even that would become normal.

"You don't mind, do you?" Noodle asked, brushing bits of hair off of the back of his neck.

2D laughed quietly to himself, marvelling at how a girl with such a big, bright pair of lungs could possibly sound so goddamn small. "Nah, love. Don't mind one bit."

For a while, it was just the sounds of scissors snipping and the morning talk shows droning on lightly in the background. 2D was dozing in and out of sleep with the feel of Noodle's fingers in his hair and on his skin to help him drift off. Occasionally, Noodle would lean in close to him in order to check if her cuts were even, and he could feel the gentle pushes of warm air against his ears as she exhaled. It made a small tremble run through his body that left him feeling warm after it passed, like Noodle filled him with something that made him feel a little bit more special than he normally did.

2D blinked his eyes open when Noodle removed the towel from his shoulders and brushed the stray hairs off. She tousled his hair. "There. It looks better this way."

2D pulled his phone out of his pocket and used it as a mirror. His hair wasn't brushing against his jaw or his cheeks anymore, and she'd only cut it just a little bit shorter than how he usually kept it. But he ran his fingers through his hair, brushed it out of his eyes, and grinned. "Yeah, looks pretty good. Thanks love. Don't gotta pay for the barber no more."

Noodle rested her chin on his shoulder and turned her head so that she was looking at his profile. "It was no trouble. You can always let me know if you need a trim."

It seemed like one of those things that Noodle would do when she was younger where she climbed into his lap, hugged him around the neck, linked her arms with his when they were walking, or even jumped on his back for a short piggy back ride back to her bedroom. But Noodle's lips were so close to his jawline that he only needed to tense it in order to feel her lips against him. He was sure Noodle realized how close she was and made no effort to move. In fact, out of the corner of his eye, he could see her slightly pursing her lips so that they'd slide against his jaw for only half a second before retreating again.

Noodle felt warm nestled on his shoulder and staring into the crook of his neck, and the gesture seemed so much intimate than anything she'd ever tried with him before. So many strange things ran through 2D's head — he wanted to touch her hair, to trace her lips with his thumb, to tilt his head and let his temple rest against hers, to let his lips brush gently against her jaw so she could know how it felt.

It all flew through his head so quickly that he barely realized he had thought it. Then, almost just as suddenly, Noodle stood up straight and collected her things. "I'll be in my room cleaning up. Just knock if you need me." She threaded her fingers through his hair one more time — a parting gift to him — and left 2D alone again.

2D looked over the back of the couch and watched Noodle pad silently up the stairs and waited for the door to her bedroom to close before he sighed out loudly and wiped a hand down his face.

For a very brief moment, he had wanted to kiss her.

Feelings were always things that 2D had troubles with. They mixed together and never made sense to him.

Noodle was his _precious_ friend. There was never anything bad about being with Noodle. If he needed to rest his head in her lap for a short nap while she played on her Nintendo above him, he could. If he wanted to pull out Evil Dead and throw all the pillows on the ground for a movie night with her, she'd happily join. If he wanted to sing duets, or play tag in the house, or dance to old Blondie records in nothing but his socks and pants, Noodle would grin up at him like the darling girl that she was and treat everyday with him like it was a party that would never end.

Except now he was _noticing_ things.

Like the fact that she was older — taller, slimmer, curved in places she wasn't curved before. The fact that she smoked before breakfast just like he did, the fact that now she shared bottles of liquor with Murdoc, the fact that she was old enough to drive, the fact that she worked and made money just like him. So many years had slipped by without him realizing it, and while 2D felt like he hadn't changed at all, Noodle had morphed into something far more lovely and far more intriguing.

So intriguing, that just her resting her cheek on his shoulder made him want to fuck it all, close his lips over hers, breathe her in, run his hands over her skin, and whisper to her how much he cared for her and how glad he was that she was back.

He wanted to be her friend, but he wanted to kiss her. He wanted things to go back the way they were, but he wanted things to change. How was anyone meant to make sense of that? What do you do when you feel two things at once and can't pick between them? 2D never pretended to be good at these sorts of things.

Noodle had found him again one evening just when the sun was doing day and the sky was still a dark blue. 2D was sitting on the stoop for a smoke, trying to get out of the house and away from Murdoc's ranting and raving filtering clear up from the basement, when Noodle cleared her throat gently from the doorway behind him. It was still hard as ever to tell when she was sneaking up behind him.

"If you keep frowning like that you'll get wrinkles like Murdoc."

2D chuckled and looked over his shoulder. "Murdoc's been frownin' for years longer 'an I have. Think I'm fine."

Noodle laughed and came to sit down next to him on the front steps of the house. She propped her feet up on the step just below where she was sitting and knocked her knees with his in greeting. "Mind if I sit?"

2D shook his head. "Bored again?"

Noodle nodded and pinched her hands in between the crooks of her knees to keep them warm in the early evening chill. "Just...didn't want to be alone. And I like your company." She pursed her lips towards his shirt pocket where his cigarettes were. "Can I have one?"

2D scowled, but pulled the pack out anyway and handed it to her. "Don' know how I feel about you smokin' these."

Noodle shrugged sheepishly and waited for 2D to pull his lighter out and light up her stick for her. "I...didn't mean to start. But now that I have, I can't stop."

"Yeah, but these things give you wrinkles an' make you look all old. Like me and Mudz." He teasingly poked underneath her eyes and smirked when she laughed and pushed his hand away. 2D pushed aside some of the hair that was hanging in Noodle's face and felt a sudden rush of fondness. "Can't have that happenin' to your pretty face."

Noodle grinned wryly and blew the smoke above her head and into the darkening sky. "Your face isn't old."

"Ah, I'm as old as the hills, love," 2D chuckled. "Murdoc says the pretty boy years are fadin'."

Noodle laughed and rested her head on 2D's shoulder. Her arm came around and wrapped itself around his own as she shivered from the breeze and pressed closer to him. "You're as lovely as ever, 2D," Noodle promised. "Don't worry."

2D turned his head so that his mouth was pressing against the top of Noodle's head and his nose was being tickled by the short strands of choppy hair on the top of Noodle's head. He inhaled gently for a moment, noticing that she even smelled different after all these years, and felt Noodle thread her fingers through his in response. She was still staring out at the street in front of them, occasionally taking a drag from her cigarette, but her thumb started rubbing small circles against the back of his hand, and 2D let his eyes gently flutter shut at the feeling.

"Hey," he muttered against her hair after taking a quick drag. "Can I ask you somethin'?"

Noodle tapped the ash off her cigarette. "Of course."

2D swallowed and kept his eyes on the row of houses in front of them. "You…" he started, struggling to form his words in a way he was never quite good at. "You said...that you weren't in...you know...the whole time you were gone."

Noodle hummed in thought for a moment, mulling over his statement. "Yeah," she assented. "I was only…. _there_ , for maybe a couple of months." Noodle took a particularly long drag. "Felt longer, though. Time passes more slowly down there than here."

2D nodded and didn't press for any more specifics. "So you spent most of your time here? You know, like _here_ here. With the livin' and stuff."

Noodle smiled softly. "Mmhm. I travelled a lot. I didn't know where the rest of you were. Kong was empty, so...I just wandered for a bit before I tried to find you all."

"Anything nice happen?"

Noodle shrugged. "Saw lots of interesting places. Never stayed the same place twice. Learned a lot. I guess that's always nice." Her voice sounded far away for a moment, like she didn't completely believe what she was saying. But Noodle tended to be cryptic like that, and 2D wasn't sure he wanted to hear a better explanation.

2D winced and tried to rephrase what he was trying to get at. "I mean...did any _one_ nice happen?"

"What do you mean?"

He ashed his cigarette on the concrete next to him. "Did you...ya know... meet anyone nice?"

Noodle turned her head and looked up at 2D's chin. "Like...someone special?"

2D tried to make his shrug seem as casual as he good so that Noodle wouldn't think he was too curious. "Yeah, I guess. Just any blokes or birds worth mentionin', ya know?"

"Why do you want to know?"

2D wasn't sure of the answer himself, and to be honest wasn't quite sure why he was asking her about her travels all of a sudden after weeks of her being back. But Noodle made him feel comfortable, and it made him want to just start asking things he had been holding in for months for the sake of trying to be sensitive to Noodle's feelings. But she seemed to be offering information just fine, and maybe she'd talk to _him_ over anyone else and finally talk about those four years that she liked to keep so secret. "Missed a lot, love," 2D explained. "Was hopin' I'd catch up on what you'd been up to. If you don' mind none, that is."

Noodle was chewing on her bottom lip and didn't say anything at first. Instead, she had reached across and plucked another cigarette from 2D's front pocket and waited for him to light it up for her again. 2D had plucked up a fresh cigarette for himself as well and didn't feel offended or put off in the least when they lapsed back into silence. Her hand was still laced with this, and having her close by was enough for him.

But she'd gone through half her cigarette when she finally opened her mouth. "There was one man."

2D's cheek was resting against Noodle's hair again as her head shifted against his shoulder. "Really?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "I spent some time in Surrey. I met him in a record store."

2D nodded. "What was he like?"

Noodle sighed wistfully. "Well...he was tall. Almost as tall as you. Green eyes. Brown hair, but styled just like yours. Nice. Liked 70s American punk. That's what he was buying in the store I met him at. It was always American punk."

Noodle wasn't taking drags of her cigarette anymore and was letting it burn out between her fingers. "He liked coffee. He was always inviting me for a cup. He was a writer for a magazine, and I told him I used to be a musician. Said I played guitar like an angel."

2D nodded along to the story. "Sounded serious," he said, the answer sounding strange to his ears.

Noodle shook her head. "Not really. I only knew him for a couple of weeks. Barely anything happened. But he was...nice."

"Did you have to leave?"

Noodle shrugged. "I guess I didn't _have_ to, but...you know very early on where you belong and who you're meant to be with, 'D. That's not something that can ever change. Those people and places will always come back. Besides, he liked me a lot more than I liked him. We'd always be off balance, and I'd always be running to catch up to his feelings. It wouldn't have worked."

Noodle breathed in and sighed out sharply. "What about you?" she asked lightly. "Anyone?"

2D chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, love, I haven't dated in a long time. Slept with plenty of birds but...nah, no one special."

"Why not?"

"Can't explain it," 2D explained. "Just...like you said. You know who you're meant to be with. Feels right. Just fits together an' all that. But, nothin's fit together in a long time. So, I guess that's the reason."

Noodle laughed and snuggled closer to him when the wind blew harder. She let her cigarette drop a couple of steps down and hooked her other hand into the crook of 2D's elbow. "I guess we're one and the same then, huh?"

2D laughed back and squeezed her hand a few times. "Guess so."

She started to get quiet again — doing that thing where he couldn't hear her breathing, couldn't hear her shifting, and was drifting deep into thoughts she didn't used to have before she left. If it wasn't because 2D could feel her breathing this close to him and had his face buried in her hair, it wouldn't have felt like she wasn't even there. There wasn't much explanation 2D could give himself for why that was. He wasn't going to pretend that he was particularly bright, especially when his head was confusing him lately. But maybe it had to do with the sad way she talked about all the "nice" places and people she'd run into. Like maybe it wasn't all that good. 2D knew what it was like to be around things that didn't make you feel good for close to four years. But for some reason, 2D felt like it didn't matter much what he went through. Noodle never deserved that.

His thoughts drifted back to the stranger Noodle mentioned and he started laughing. "What did that bloke say? Played guitar like an angel?"

"Yeah," Noodle responded. "Most beautiful thing he'd ever heard."

"That's funny," 2D replied. "'Cause I sort of remember you jumpin' outta that crate and playin' something wot sounded like 200 demons screamin' in Arabic."

Noodle burst into laughter — light and ringing, sort of what she used to sound like when she was a kid. "Yeah," she chuckled. "You did say that."

2D turned to her strangely. "And don't you _hate_ coffee?"

"I don't _hate_ it," Noodle clarified. "But...I mean, it was fine. I just ordered tea all the time. He seemed to really like taking me to coffee shops."

2D shook his head. "Nah. Not where I would have taken you."

Noodle lifted her head from his shoulder and stared at him teasingly. "So where would you have taken me then, huh?"

He reached into his pockets, found the keys to his banged up car sitting in the driveway, and dangled them in front of her face. "Wanna see?"

Noodle blinked at him. "Right now?"

"Yeah, why not?" 2D shrugged. "We got time. Place don't close for another couple o' hours or so. 'At's plenty of time."

"Wait, wait, where are we going?" Noodle asked.

2D flung his spent cigarette butt on the sidewalk somewhere and checked his pockets once more. "You got coins on you?"

Noodle looked down and prodded the wallet that was sticking out of her pants. "Um...I think so. But 2D, what — ?"

"Don't worry about it," 2D told her, walking over her legs and jogging to the driveway. "Just come on. Promise it'll be fun."

2D didn't really leave her any room to argue since he was already unlocking the car and jumping into the seat. He reached over, pulled open the passenger's door, and drummed his hands against the leather seats, urging her to come into. Noodle rolled her eyes, but smiled as she ashed her cigarette on one of the first floor window sills and headed towards the driveway.

She was buckling herself into the car as she watched him adjust his rearview mirror. "Didn't you crash this last week?"

2D cleared his throat. "...no. Look don't worry. _You're_ in the car. I'll be careful."

"Doctor said you're not allowed to drive."

"Ah, I'll be fine. 'Sides. Can't get to your surprise by walkin'."

Noodle smirked. "The surprise that you _just_ came up with, and also the one you're _not_ going to warn me about."

2D was pulling out of the driveway. "Nope. So sit tight and put in some music for the drive. Ain't gettin' outta this one."

Noodle made a show of resigning herself to the trip, but she quickly chuckled at 2D's enthusiastic tapping on the steering wheel and immediately began to shuffle through the glove compartment through all the sleeves and cases of disks that 2D kept in there. She was shuffling through a large pile of them towards the back of the compartment and started laughing. "You have _so_ many disks from The Clash."

"That's classic British punk, man," 2D announced in his defense. "Can't get better 'an The Clash." He reached over with one hand and tapped on one of the sleeves in her right hand. "Stick in their Combat Rock album. Now _that_ was somethin'..."

They drove toward London's South Bank for a long while, the whole time keeping the windows rolled down and screaming out the lyrics to "Should I Stay or Should I Go" and "Rock the Casbah." It got 2D into this long conversation about the first time he'd ever gotten his hands on one of their vinyls when one of his friends from primary school had gotten caught by the police for trying to steal it, and 2D wound up with it instead. It was a story that Noodle was barely breathing through because she was laughing so hard, and it made her knock over a pile of disks and find an old mix that 2D had made of a bunch of his favorite Buzzcocks songs. She insisted on hearing the whole thing from beginning to end, and 2D almost veered off the road when Noodle sang along perfectly to "Ever Fallen in Love," complete with the appropriate air guitar riffs.

It was halfway through "What Do I Get?" when Noodle finally squinted out of the windows and gave 2D what could be described as nothing less than a shit eating grin. "You didn't take us to an arcade, did you?"

2D finished parking and started fishing money out of his pocket. "Better stock up on tokens. Been told I'm a prodigy at air hockey."

There were dozens of in-home entertainment attractions at Namco Funscape and 2D decided to take her there since he had a lot of fun here during that one trip to London that his mum and dad had taken him on when he was really young. It was littered with a mix of children and adults that were trying their hands on all the machines that were buzzing, blinking, and ringing all around the room. Noodle was hopping on her toes like she was ten years old and she immediately darted over to one of the token machines to fill her pockets.

It was late, so they were only able to stay for the last few hours that the arcade was open. But in that time, she and 2D had fallen into a rather intense pinball competition, managed to make a team effort of beating the high score of 2 million on the Pac Man machine, and, thanks to 2D, managed to walk away with armfuls of stuffed animals that they weren't sure they were even going to keep from the claw machine. Noodle had gone and completely embarrassed him on the dancing games that betrayed his uncoordinated inability to hit the foot pads in time. It eventually morphed into Noodle drawing a considerably crowd when she pumped up the difficulty as high as it would do and still managed to hit an accuracy score in the nineties.

They were switching between a shooting game and trying to break their air hockey tie when the arcade had finally closed for the evening and Noodle and 2D had finally collapsed back into the car, dumping all of their prizes into the backseat for them to do who knew what with later.

They stayed in the parked car, ripping through all the candy that 2D had pulled out of the claw machine, and 2D grinned almost in triumph when he saw Noodle tapping her feet against his dashboard to more of the songs from The Jam albums he almost forget he kept in his car. She was blowing bubble gum and laughing at 2D's lame attempt at humor and making ridiculous noises to try and mimic guitar playing. It was something that he was tempted to pluck out a memory from when Noodle was first living in Kong and filling that depressing haunted place with brightness. It was always what he loved Noodle for — she could turn anything into a good time.

He couldn't help but comment, "I don't think I've ever seen you this happy in weeks."

Noodle paused for a moment, as if she had finally taken a moment to pay attention to herself in a way she hadn't bothered with before. Her shoulders slumped a little bit, but she ruffled her hair self consciously and stared at her hands as she let them plop into her lap. "I don't know what to say to that…"

"Don't gotta say nothin'," 2D said. "Just noticin' is all."

Noodle shrugged, looking out through the windshield at the London lights flickering in the dark night that had finally rolled in. "I don't know," she started. "I just...things are different, you know? I wasn't sure what to think of it all. I'm still not." She turned to him meekly. "I didn't mean to make you think that I was sad."

"Didn't think that," 2D explained. He couldn't help but reach out and tuck her hair behind her ears. "Just...you were different is all. Quieter. Older. Guess I just missed how things used to be. Lot simpler then. But now things got...messy."

Noodle sighed. "Yeah. Messy is a good word." She leaned back into her seat and kept her head turned towards him. "But...we're all here. We were always going to come back here. I knew it."

2D snorted. "Did you?"

"Of course I did." Noodle reached out and pulled 2D's right hand off of the steering wheel so that she could rub her thumb on the back of his hands. 2D felt his face and body warm up pleasantly at the action, and he let his eyes flutter closed for a moment before Noodle spoke up again. "Like I said. You always know who you're meant to be with."

2D couldn't remember the last time he felt this comfortable. Sitting in his car out in London, The Jam playing lightly in the background, finally noticing all of the lovely things about Noodle that he had been without for years and had finally gotten back. She was right. He couldn't imagine _not_ being with her like this in the future. Kinda like, despite everything that could ever happen, they'd always come back here. Two people that cared about each other being able to find things to laugh about, things to sing about, and things to work towards keeping. There was something really beautiful about that — something he wanted to sing about and keep close to him so that he wouldn't forget it.

Perhaps it was that comfort or that overwhelming feeling of rightness that he felt sitting in that care with Noodle, but he spoke his feelings without thinking. "I missed you like I missed breathing, love," he muttered quietly. "Thought I'd never get through it without you."

Noodle smiled softly. "I missed you too. Really, really missed you. My heart burst when I saw you again."

"English Rose" was floating softly and sweetly from the radio and suddenly he was overcome with so much affection for her that he almost didn't know where to put it all. He reached a hand over and fixed her hair once more, pausing to cradle her cheek and rub a thumb along her cheekbones when she smiled at the action. He was staring at her lips and the strong desire to kiss her came to him again — like there wasn't anything else that he could do that was strong enough to show how he was feeling.

Noodle wet her lips and her mouth was hanging open just a touch, her eyes gently flitting across 2D's face as if she were trying to soak up parts of him that she had also saw had changed and shifted while she was gone. And she just looked so lovely sitting there — older but just as beautiful and just as precious as he remembered her to be. Then, he decided he couldn't help himself.

When 2D leaned in towards her, he felt Noodle smile against his lips right before he finally kissed her. He moved his lips softly and leisurely over hers, and his chest filled when Noodle sighed into his mouth and curled her fingers gently against his cheek. 2D took great care to open her mouth and gently run his tongue over her lips. Noodle's hand moved from his cheek to the back of his neck to play with the strands of hair that she'd trimmed a couple of days ago as 2D pulled her closer to him.

And, God, kissing Noodle was about the rightest thing he'd ever done. There was none of those conflicting feelings in his head where he felt like he had to pick between this and being her friend. Everything from her lips in between his, her tongue shyly ghosting across his, her soft, breathy moans disappearing between their mouths — it all made him want to collect Noodle into his arms and just keep her there so that she wouldn't have to leave him again. Because all of a sudden 2D realized that he didn't have to give up anything to want this — nothing had to disappear or change for the worse. It was just one more thing that was special to them — something that no one else had to understand. And nothing had felt that good in a damn long time.

When 2D separated for a moment, Noodle laughed softly. "I've been waiting for you to do that for days."

2D took a moment to breathe her in, sight out, and revel in just how goddamn happy he finally felt. "Yeah. Me too."


End file.
